They said that when van der Zwaan was interviewed by the FBI in November, he told investigators that Gates had informed him that Person A was a former officer of the Russian military intelligence service, known as the GRU.
Kilimnik ran Manafort’s office in Kiev during the 10 years he did consulting work there, The Post reported in 2017.
During his August 2016 meeting with Kilimnik, Manafort has said he and his longtime Kiev office manager discussed, among other topics, the ongoing campaign, including the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. Stolen DNC emails had been released by WikiLeaks the previous month, and the hack was widely suspected to be the work of Russia.
.. During Kilimnik’s time working for Manafort in Kiev, he had served as a liaison for Manafort to the Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, with whom Manafort had done business. Emails previously described to The Post show that Manafort asked Kilimnik during the campaign to offer Deripaska “private briefings” about Trump’s effort.
Prosecutors say longtime Manafort colleague has ‘ties’ to Russian intelligence
Federal prosecutors asserted Monday that a longtime associate of Paul Manafort, the former chairman of President Trump’s campaign, has been “assessed to have ties” to Russian intelligence — the first time the special counsel has alleged a Trump official had such contacts.
.. prosecutor Andrew Weissmann urged the judge to reject the bail deal, arguing that Manafort and a Russian colleague have been secretly ghostwriting an English-language editorial that appeared to defend Manafort’s work advising a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine.
.. They said Manafort worked on the draft as recently as last week with “a long-time Russian colleague . . . who is currently based in Russia and assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service.”
.. Manafort has had a long-standing Russian employee named Konstantin Kilimnik who ran Manafort’s office in Kiev during the 10 years he did consulting work there.
.. Kilimnik attended a Russian military foreign language university in the late 1980s that experts have said was a training ground for Russian intelligence services.
.. For a decade, Manafort and Kilimnik worked with then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was initially considered pro-Western but eventually became allied with Russian interests.
Kilimnik also served as Manafort’s liaison to Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate and ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin who employed Manafort as an investment consultant.
.. According to emails described to The Post, Manafort directed Kilimnik to offer Deripaska “private briefings” about Trump’s campaign.
Manafort’s man in Kiev
The Trump campaign chairman’s closeness to a Russian Army-trained linguist turned Ukrainian political operative is raising questions, concerns.
In an effort to collect previously undisclosed millions of dollars he’s owed by an oligarch-backed Ukrainian political party, Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been relying on a trusted protégé whose links to Russia and its Ukrainian allies have prompted concerns among Manafort associates, according to people who worked with both men.
.. The protégé, Konstantin Kilimnik, has had conversations with fellow operatives in Kiev about collecting unpaid fees owed to Manafort’s company by a Russia-friendly political party called Opposition Bloc
.. A Russian Army-trained linguist who has told a previous employer of a background with Russian intelligence, Kilimnik started working for Manafort in 2005 when Manafort was representing Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, a gig that morphed into a long-term contract with Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin-aligned hard-liner who became president of Ukraine.
.. Trump has demonstrated more interest in Russia’s affairs than in perhaps any other area of foreign policy.
.. It soon became an article of faith in IRI circles that Kilimnik had been in the intelligence service, according to five people who worked in and around the group in Moscow, who said Kilimnik never sought to correct that impression.
.. “It was like ‘Kostya, the guy from the GRU’ — that’s how we talked about him,”
.. The lifestyle was sort of a JV version of the jet-setting existence of his boss, Manafort.
.. A former trucking official who had been convicted and incarcerated as a teenager for serious crimes, Yanukovych had become a popular symbol of the corruption that plagues Ukraine after his team tried to rig the 2004 presidential election.
.. the “Party of Regions is working to change its image from that of a haven for mobsters into that of a legitimate political party. Tapping the deep pockets of [Akhmetov], Regions has hired veteran K Street political help for its ‘extreme makeover’ effort … [Manafort’s firm] is among the political consultants that have been hired to do the nipping and tucking.”
.. “And because Paul doesn’t speak Russian or Ukrainian, he always had to have someone like that with him in meetings, so KK was with him all the time. He was very close to Paul and very trusted.”
.. And, in a Cayman Islands legal filing to recoup Deripaska’s cash, lawyers named Kilimnik as one of seven “key individuals” involved in the partnership along with Manafort, Gates, and a handful of then-associates.
.. Manafort entered into other ventures with other oligarchs, as well. And the operative who worked with Manafort’s team said, “These guys had a lot of stuff going on outside the campaign context, and KK was involved in all of that as well.”
.. Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency obtained documents showing that from 2007 through 2012, Yanukovych’s party had earmarked $12.7 million in off-books cash payments for Manafort, The New York Times revealed this week.
Manafort, who’s been criticized by some former colleagues for prioritizing cash over principles, rejected the report. He asserted in a statement that “the suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly, and nonsensical.”
.. when Manafort traveled to Kiev in 2015 to try to secure the cash he was owed, he was “ambushed” in the lobby of the city’s Hyatt hotel by the landlord for his office demanding back rent.
.. “I always understood that he was in the Russian Army intelligence for a couple years,” said an international political consultant, who has worked with Kilimnik, and who stressed that, at the time, all Russian men were required to serve in the military. But the consultant added, “I don’t think it was as big a deal as people made it out to be.”
.. It’s not like you can say, ‘I used to work for [Russian intelligence].’ It’s a permanent affiliation. There is no such thing as a former [Russian intelligence] officer.”